1. Technical Field
The present application relates to a method and apparatus, in a bottling plant, for packing beverage bottles in cases with and without dividers and a method and apparatus for packing containers in cases with and without dividers.
2. Background Information
Background information is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily admit that subsequently mentioned information and publications are prior art.
The present application relates to a packing head for use in a device for picking up container groups standing ready in a first configuration in a pick-up area, and for depositing said container groups in a delivery area. The packing head comprises a plurality of container grippers or packing bells, each for gripping one container. The packing bells are movable on a packing head frame in a displacement plane (X-Y plane) perpendicular or essentially perpendicular to the axis of the respective container for changing the configuration or arrangement of the containers in the container group on the packing head.
Packing heads are used, for example, to unpack or pick up bottles or similar containers as container groups comprising multiple containers from boxes, for example bottle cases, and deposit these on a conveyor belt, or conversely to pick up containers, which have been guided into tracks or are standing ready in multiple rows or tracks in a pick-up area, as container groups and then deposit these in a delivery area, for example placing them in boxes standing ready there for this purpose. In such cases, it is usually necessary or may be desired to rearrange the respective container group picked up by the packing head, or the containers that are held suspended by grippers or packing bells of the packing head after being picked up and before being deposited in the deposit or placement area, in order to modify the configuration, i.e., the arrangement of the containers relative to one another in the picked-up position in the container group, for example, such that the arrangement then corresponds to the configuration that is required at the delivery area, for example the compartment partitioning of a bottle case.
To enable this change in configuration, each of the grippers or packing bells may be disposed on mounts or sliding frames of the packing head. The mounts or sliding frames can be displaced during operation in two displacement axes that extend perpendicular or substantially perpendicular to one another and horizontally or substantially horizontally. The mounts or sliding frames are connected to one another via plate link conveyor chains, so that by extending and compressing the plate link conveyor chains, for example with a pneumatic cylinder, two different configurations are possible, for example with different distances between adjacent packing bells in the two displacement axes. Because the configurations of the container groups that are possible with the packing head are determined by the plate link conveyor chains that are used, in order to change the configuration the plate link conveyor chains must be exchanged, which is associated with substantial expenditure on labor.